“I find out more about what happens by reading the press than your reports”

The ambassador conferences (that take place periodically in each country) are events to socialize, greet in person colleagues whom you hardly see the rest of the year and create group and nation spirit. They also serve for the boss (president or foreign minister) to congratulate his diplomats for his task and define the priorities of the new course and the strategy to follow.

The European Union welcomes its own 2022 annual conference this week, the first face-to-face event since the outbreak of the pandemic, which brings together representatives of more than 140 EU delegations and offices around the world. But in his inaugural address it’s Monday, Josep Borrell has completely bypassed traditional diplomatic practices and he has dedicated himself to berating his subordinates (without using euphemisms) for not doing their job well and for being slow and arrogant.

“This is not the moment when I am going to send flowers to everyone saying that they are handsome, they work very wellwe are very happy, we are a great family, etc”, Borrell snapped at the ambassadors as soon as they began. “This is a moment to talk among ourselves about what we do not do well enough, why I am not always happy with the way on which my delegations work and to send clear messages about how I would like them to improve”, he said.

[Borrell avisa de que la lucha por la energía definirá el nuevo equilibrio de poderes en el mundo]

Borrell’s central thesis is that we live in “a world of radical uncertainty” in which “the speed and scope of change is exceptional”. “Events that we thought would never happen are happening one after another. At this rate, black swans will become the majority. There will be no more white swans, they will all be blackbecause one after another things have happened that were unlikely to happen, and yet they have happened and have a very strong impact,” he said.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is one of those “black swans,” as is the unexpected resistance in kyiv. Neither was the escalation of tension in Taiwan between the United States and China, nor the energy crisis nor the accelerated rise in interest rates by all central banks following in the wake of the US Federal Reserve on the European agenda. “It’s a perfect storm. Everyone is running to raise rates and that will cause a global recession,” she said.

Slouched Ambassadors

Borrell censures that EU ambassadors around the world are not up to these challenges: they are lounging and they are not capable of reacting to this succession of crises in real time. “I need to be informed quickly, in real time, about what is happening in your countries. I want to be informed by you, not by the press. Sometimes, I know more about what is happening somewhere by reading the newspapers than by reading your reports. Your reports sometimes arrive too late”, complains the head of European diplomacy.

“I want them to be more reactive, 24 hours a day. We are living in crisis, we must be in crisis mode. Explain what is happening: quickly, immediately. Even if you don’t have the complete information in the first hours, show that you are there “, Borrell has claimed to his subordinates.

“Having all of you around the world, should be the best informed person in the world, at least as much as any foreign minister. I am the ‘Foreign Minister of Europe’. Behave as you would if you were in an embassy: send a telegram, a cable, a mail, quickly. Quick, please, react,” insists the High Representative.

Another of Borrell’s criticisms of his subordinates is that they give up fighting the battle of communication, something that Beijing or Moscow do know how to do. “It continues to surprise me that, in some delegations, it seems that they do not take our communication sufficiently into account, and they do not tweet and retweet the messages that we are preparing from the center. They have to be a network that is repeating, transmitting, insisting”, it has been complained.

conquer the minds

“This is a battle we’re not winning because we’re not fighting hard enough. We don’t understand what a fight is. In addition to conquering a space, you have to conquer minds. The Russians and the Chinese are very good at it,” says the High Representative.

But to ‘win minds’, European ambassadors must abandon the self-righteous tone they sometimes display. “we need to hear more. We need to practice much more ‘listening mode’ with the rest of the world. We must have more empathy. We tend to overestimate rational arguments. ‘We are the land of reason’. We think we know best what interests othersBorrell says.

How can all these problems be corrected? So what should the EU ambassadors do? The head of golden diplomacy sums it up in this golden rule: “Take more initiative. Prepare to be bold.”